From A Certain Degree
by Jamie Marina Lau & Flower Boy 卓颖贤
Jamie Marina Lau & Flower Boy 卓颖贤 / Photo by Hashem McAdam
episode 1
Being surprised by outer shells, making conversation with furniture
I’d rather silence than politeness,
I’d rather silence than to say that’s okay
Thank you that’s okay you can touch me like that
We have all day now to fuck (8)
All century now to fuck
Poolside magically the plants stayed watered, towels stay folded,
Drivers don’t complain -passengers do
When I hit the pool, the chlorine burns but I stay cool
Tell me how it works when I hear your voice under water but you’re barely speaking
It must mean I understand inflection now (12)
episode 2
Eat good to eat bad, find out whether I have talent
Never wrote the book in my head
Relate-able to be un-relateable
I’m wondering if kid’s ripped heads off of lizards, (10)
I watch pollution and daydream about contributing,
Watch movies from a monitor under mango tree
Ringtone by the rice-field, Shazam a struggling convenience store,
Make time to make something, then don’t know what’s the point
It’s not silent but you make it blurred
So I know how to be used (1B/G)
episode 3
For a moment I forget the sun sets, it melts right off the earth
And I forgot that people could be beautiful, but what men are looking at with me is not for what I am but what I give to them in this time, how I’m silent so they can fill me with what they like
It’s like licking me not at the feet but in the eye (11)
Still I encourage him to feel something as I swallow loudly-
This Behaviour by a watering hole
This de Beauvoir by content souls,
Silence yes by looking, yes notice people eating their vices up, shitting out architecture
To litter someone else’s land with.
How do you disrespect my brothers in my brother’s country, and disrespect me in my mother country too? (9)
How to articulate violence from a certain degree? I’ll measure our differing abilities to be silent (9)
(9)
How is it that when I am victimhood, I am silent and you are louder than before, how is it that when I try loudness, you are louder than you were before, how is it you self-victimise and in this you are loud, but you never let me speak a word—should you not let me speak a language? ■
NOTE
Numbers refer to Roland SP control—I created sonic ‘punctuation’ in order to bring rhythm and breath to the piece. Particularly because we ask this to be a purely sonic experience.
Jamie Marina Lau is a multidisciplinary artist and author. Her first novel Pink Mountain on Locust Island was published in 2018 with Brow Books and in 2020 with Coffee House Press (USA). Her second novel is Gunk Baby. With explorations focusing on experimental uses of language, Lau's work meditates on a landscape exploring dis-location of culture and space.
flower boy 卓颖贤 aka Non Chalant is a Sydney-based producer. At the heart of her hazy, ambient songwriting is a duality of melancholic love songs and odes to identity and heritage.
